economics or business related careers for someone who wants to "save the world"?

<p>Do you have ideas of possible careers or majors for someone interested in economics, politics, and French. </p>

<p>Something where they can work abroad perhaps... or with international business... and have a chance to use language skills??</p>

<p>An Economics Major and French Minor perhaps??</p>

<p>Anyone w/similar interests?</p>

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<p>This sounded interesting... this was someone who was a senior at Northwestern, planning to go into Peace Corps but using business too.</p>

<p>I'm going into the Peace Corps in Bolivia to work on microenterprise development. Microenterprise refers to the statistic that 85 to 90 percent of the businesses in Bolivia have five people or less. We'll try to assist them in terms of planning and marketing, basically with whatever skill they need the most. The population is very uneducated in terms of school experience, and they don't necessarily have the business-planning skills or the understanding of what to look for. I don't expect, frankly, that in my two and a half years I'm going to make an incredible difference, but I think that I'll plant seeds and hopefully some of them will bloom. It may be while I'm there, but more likely it won't be until after I'm gone.
Deciding to go into the Peace Corps was a long, involved process for me. I see a lot of people going into consulting or investment banking and then getting a professional degree and living a happy life ever after. For the last two years, I've really been trying to assess what I want to do, and I came to the realization that, no matter what, I wanted to be helping people. Eventually, when I decide to settle down and have a family, making money will be a much higher priority than it is now. But first, I want to go beyond the boundaries of what I'm comfortable with and what I know and challenge myself intellectually, physically, and emotionally. I want to see what the world's like and hopefully make myself a better person.</p>

<p>I definitely understand where you're coming from, I"m in the same boat. </p>

<p>There's actually a lot of things that are econ-related and also saving-the-world related. Look into microfinance (pretty good article on it on Wikipedia), maybe the World Bank or the IMF. French will help a lot b/c a lot of international NGO's operate in French as their primary language. Also consider policy related stuff, research at think tanks, etc.</p>

<p>USAID is also a definite possibility; if you're in college, they have junior year programs in Africa, which are definitely worth the consideration.</p>

<p>Nonprofit-NOT in Collegeboard's sense of the word, but Amnesty International or Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's sense of the word. BTW I'm sure Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation needs money managers and Amnesty International needs finance types.</p>

<p>Bumpity bump.</p>

<p>Try looking into some economic development firms.</p>

<p>Global Economic Development.</p>

<p>I'm sure 3rd world countries out there would love the help.</p>

<p>I want to join the Peace Corps. How hard is it to get accepted? I'm at Carnegie Mellon U and would be doing this after graduating with a degree in electrical and computer engineering. Only problems are I don't speak any other language fluently (a tiny bit of Spanish), and I'm likely to have a bad GPA. Is it very competetive?</p>